The present relates to the field of airflow management and in particular to cooling systems that may be suitable for electronic equipment.
Modern day electronic equipment often includes multiple subsystems mounted within a relatively small cabinet for protection and for the convenience of the user. However, such arrangements tend to concentrate large amounts of heat within a constrained area. This heat must be removed for system reliability and safety reasons from the cabinet. Often, the extreme density of electronics within the cabinet necessitates a high airflow rate and relatively high pressure to accomplish the heat removal. In addition, to provide for redundancy and high reliability of the electronic systems, it may be preferred to provide for a heat removal and cooling system that is not totally dependent on a single air mover.
Centrifugal blade blowers may provide for high pressure and high volume air movement that may be suitable for electronic cooling. However, because of the construction of the impeller typically provided on the blower, it is very difficult and inefficient to provide for redundant blowers for a single cabinet. One difficulty in providing redundant centrifugal blowers is based on the typical construction of the blowers. The centrifugal blowers have impellers that typically have a solid base structure that prevents air from flowing in a direction other than transverse to the inlet. This may dictate that blowers may have to be mounted side by side if redundancy is desired. A side by side mounting may not be desirable due to changes in airflow patterns if an individual blower fails and other reasons
Therefore, what is needed is an airflow method and apparatus that provides redundancy while sustaining the required total airflow and maintaining the same airflow patterns within a cabinet and other advantages.